It all started back at the turn of the century… we fell into conversation with the bassist John Clark, flipping through the jazz record bins, and the next thing we knew, we’d agreed on presenting a trio on a Friday evening a few weeks hence. John arrived with veteran drummer Vince Lateano and the pianist Lee Bloom, who brought along an electric keyboard… A few weeks later, one of Lee’s piano students, Jon Anderson, assembled a trio with his buddy Andrew Kelsey, George & Evelyn’s kid from up on Miguel Street… Not long after that, Eric Shifrin set up his keyboard with a trio.

The neighbors clamored for more, especially Blanche Bebb’s friend Mary Goode… The proprietor told ’em, we gotta pay the musicians,  you know…  and that got serious when a retired tenor sax player from up on Martha Street, Chuck Peterson, heard from Mary that Bird & Beckett was amenable to jazz… he approached same proprietor and made a proposition…

Chuck Peterson, with singer Dorothy Lefkovits, guitarist Glen Deardorff and drummer Tony Johnson, from a 2010 incarnation of the 230 Jones Street band…

Chuck promised he’d bring musicians every Friday if we’d give the band a weekly berth. He’d take his union pension, and his royalties from “Spirit in the Sky.” and make sure his colleagues were paid adequately, we’d just have to pay what we could.

Chuck’s gone now, but his 230 Jones Street Literary Jazz Band, so named for the location of the Local 6 headquarters from back in the day, lives on–with veteran drummer Tony Johnson now at the helm. Happy Hour, 5:30-8:00pm, on the fourth Friday of every month.

Every third Friday’s happy hour has Chuck’s guitar player from back then, young Scott Foster, leading the band. And every second Friday, it’s none other than Eric Shifrin with the In Crowd. First Fridays, and fifth Fridays when they happen, it’s a wild card.

Oh, and Vince? He brings his trio in the third Sunday of every month at 5. And he brings the trio back on the last Sunday of every month, also at 5, to conduct a jam session for cats across the spectrum from wet behind the ears to long in the tooth… who’d a thunk it? Jazz at Bird & Beckett in 2023 is still firmly rooted in the new soil of 1999.

Take a chance on the jazz happy hour at Bird & Beckett. It’ll get your weekend started right.

BYOB and a twenty for the band. That’ll git it!